State horticultural society. xq.*; 



True, under the conditions unfavorable to oxydation, such as low 

 temperature and lack ot absorbing and excreting surface, the decay'is 

 so retarded as to be very much less discernible, but that it is takinj^ 

 place even in our plants while hybernating, is well established. 



But what then of the fungi which do not live and grow by a i)roress 

 of deoxydation, as do the others, but which do exactly the opposite, 

 namely, oxydize; which stand in the same relation to the other |)lants 

 that animals do, and which accom])lisl' the destruction of their so-called 

 more highly organized brethren, whenever they can. If it be the office 

 of i)lants, in the economy of Nature, to take unorganized substances and 

 organize them into food for animals which must have organic food or 

 die, then must the fungi be animal in their functions, for they feed upon 

 organic food already prepared for them by other plants. 'They are 

 oxydizers and plant destroyers, as are animals ; and the products of their 

 action and decay, (as is the case with animals) are finally inorganic. 



But the strangest part of the mystery of the fungi is that their 

 presence^ simply, will induce chemical combinations the opposite of those 

 which would occur were they absent. They feed upon plants when 

 dead, but they do vastly more, to our sorrow; their intimate presence 

 kills tiiat they may feed. When the pheuogamous plant decays it does 

 just what the fungus does when it lives and thrives. '' Evil communica- 

 ions corrupting good manners " again. The history of the phenoga- 

 mous plant, is in stages and degrees, as follows : 



First. A seed, in which the nature of its constitution, and the cir- 

 cumstances surrounding are such that decay is retarded. Especially is 

 lack of moisture the cause of its preservation. But decay does go on, 

 because it finally eats up — annihilates the life principle, and the seed 

 cannot grow. 



Second. Seed growth. Supply moisture, oxygen, heat, and a part 

 of the seed begins to decay, and another part to grow by feeding upon 

 it. The young plantlet, acting like the maturer fungus, living upon or- 

 ganized food. 



Third. Daily plant growth. While circumstances are favorable the 

 plant grows, deoxydizing carbonic acid, but when circumstances (nota- 

 bly the circumstance of light) are unfavorable the plant begins to lose 

 its vital force and its deoxydizing power, and decay — oxydation — begins 

 in turn to be arrested on the return of light. 



Fourth. Hybernation. The loss (jf leafage not only curtails ab- 

 sorptive and excretive surface, but, the millions of laboratories, the 

 chlorophyll cells are gone. So the decay which sets in is not so rapid, 

 but then the temperature is lowered, and often the supply of moisture 

 is impaired by the frozen earth, so the decay of winter is but a minimum 

 cjuantity. But decay takes place, as is early proved in the |)roducts of 

 the tree at the end of its hybernation. Where was starch in autumn (as 

 in the maples) in spring there is sugar, and a little later a mucilaginous, 

 substance containing nitrogen which is food for the bursting buds now 

 feeding on organized food as the fungi do, and as the plantlet did in its 

 early history. 



